CE Mark for GenomSys’ software tools for genomic data processing

GenomSys is a pioneer in developing the ISO-defined open standard for genomic data storage and processing. The company’s MPEG-G Codec Suite is a collection of software tools to process genomic data compliant with ISO/IEC-23092 genomic data standard (MPEG-G). The tools enable organisations to implement the standard and leverage its benefits by encoding and decoding genomic data; they also include source code examples, a comprehensive user manual, and additional software to transcode from/to legacy formats (to preserve past investments) and to integrate functionalities into existing applications and pipelines.

The Codec Suite is now CE marked as an in-Vitro Diagnostic Medical Device and hence approved for clinical-grade diagnostic purposes. With this milestone, GenomSys is taking the next step in enabling laboratories and end-users to take advantage of MPEG-G native analytical pipelines for more efficient storage and focused analyses via selective access.

Genetic testing is becoming an increasingly important tool within healthcare and especially in disease prevention. Although enablers are increasingly in places, such as dramatic reduction in sequencing costs and growing sequencing capacity, personalised genomics has not yet been able to take off fully. The bottlenecks lie with the uncertainty of data privacy and the challenges dealing with a significant amount of data. The newly CE marked MPEG-G Codec Suite helps laboratories transform their legacy formatted files into MPEG-G and leverage the accompanying efficiencies and high-security level from this widely interoperable data standard.

Besides data protection, MPEG-G allows for storing a significant amount of data. As expressed by Claudio Alberti, CTO of GenomSys it is possible to compress a whole-genome file to less than 25% of the size of legacy formats, resulting in cost savings for companies. The solution also allows for better processing of genomic data; it can substantially shorten processing time since it does not require any preprocessing steps during the analysis, consequently cutting time by more than 89% to access each sample. 

The CE marking of the MPEG-G Codec Suite demonstrates GenomSys’ ambition to provide a clinical-grade solution for the genetic community to leverage the standard’s benefits and an actual step towards real personalised medicine.